A restored World War II-era boxcar travels Southwest Florida, as an educational tool and is featured in a documentary called
“Boxcar: A Journey of Redemption,” made by Naples resident Joel Banow.

Joel Banow

NAPLES - -- 11 p.m. Wednesday WGCU channel 202

-- 3 p.m. April 18 on WGCU channel 3

Four wooden walls, a ceiling and a floor.

It's a simple, rectangular boxcar from World War II, but this boxcar's story is far from simple. People were packed inside its walls and transported to concentration camps, and today in Southwest Florida, educators use it as a symbol to speak about the Holocaust and other genocides.

A documentary film called "Boxcar: A Journey of Redemption," airing on WGCU Wednesday and April 18, will tell the story of the boxcar, including the history behind it and its current use by the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida. Naples resident and retired television director Joel Banow produced and directed the film, with scriptwriter Janina Birtolo.

"The boxcar is an iconic symbol of the Holocaust," Banow said. "It implemented the final solution. It got all these people from where they were to the death camps, the labor camps. I wanted to put it into context."

As soon as he learned that the boxcar was coming to Collier County, Banow started documenting its travels on film. He knew he wanted to make a film about its importance, and the history surrounding it. Then later, he and a research assistant sifted through hours upon hours of archived video interviews with Holocaust survivors who spoke about their experiences in boxcars. The stories of survivors who live in Southwest Florida are also included.

The film puts the boxcar in context by telling the story of the German railway system and how it came to be used during World War II to transport people.

Banow also used still images from a collection of photos called the "Auschwitz Album," a photo album of images taken by SS at the concentration camp. A Jewish woman who had been in Auschwitz discovered the album after being liberated, and later donated it to Yad Vashem, Israel's holocaust memorial. You can see the images:

www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/index.html

Banow sent a cameraman to Auschwitz to shoot images of the camp as it is today, and got video shot in the same places the images in the album were taken, to show how the same sites look today.

The final piece of the story tells how the boxcar came to Naples to be restored and now tours Southwest Florida schools as an educational exhibit.

"We use the boxcar in a very unique way, moving it from school to school, location to location," Banow said.

The boxcar is used to teach about the Holocaust, and also about other instances of genocide in more recent history, said Amy Snyder, the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida's education director. It has visited 39 schools since April 2008.

"It's symbolic not only of the Holocaust, but of any time people have been displaced," Snyder said.

"We make sure that people understand that the Holocaust is one event of many in which prejudice and hatred have lead to the destruction of people."

WGCU, the local public television station, plans to offer the film to American Public Television, which is like a syndicate for public television stations, Banow said. If enough stations express interest, it could be shown around the country.